"To read Mark Gibbons' poetry is to have an intimate conversation with your community, the guy on the next barstool, the woman in the checkout line, the person across the alley. Gibbons is a poet conversationalist. His words are a wonder and a balm."
-Debra Magpie Earling
Author of Perma Red
"Mark Gibbons’ plain-spoken profundities get at the heart of what us late-blooming boomers call America. The small-town childhoods, the hard times of the hard-working, hard-drinking mothers and fathers and the hard-driving rock that sustains them, find their vernacular and get sung again, just as Whitman predicted. It’s a music we need these days."
- Greg Keeler
Author of Bluebird Run
"These new poems are exquisite things—the targets specific and the weapons sharpened. He will never be a bitter writer, but these words are no longer kindling and flint, no longer a search for the things that make us combustible. He found it. This collection is a flamethrower."
- Richard Fifield
Author of The Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton
"A book of Mark Gibbons poems takes you on an intense journey. The poems found “In The Weeds” continue that journey with chants, howls and maybe even a hymn or two, not the hymns of a choir boy, mind you, the words gathered here rant, rave, bless and curse. They are the pronouncements of a grown man aching into further growth, a great hallelujah for life its own self ever confessing its limits and celebrating its joys. Take your time with this book it’s worth it."
- Dave Thomas
Author of Afternoon Stroll